The brand new, and tiny, MP3 player from Phillips is out and Cnet recently got their hands on it. The GoGear Spark appears to be a competitor to the iPod Shuffle or the Sansa Clip. The device has a minuscule 1.5″ display and has a (somewhat) innovative interface system where the controls are activated by touching different parts of the screen - similar to the iRiver’s D-click.

The Good: The Philips GoGear Spark packs music, photos, radio, voice recording, long battery life, and a color screen into an affordable little package.

The Bad: The GoGear Spark is light on format support, voice recordings are noisy, storage capacity is meager, and not everyone will appreciate its wearable design.

The Bottom line: In the world of budget MP3 players, the Philips GoGear Spark is a diamond in the rough, offering an attractive balance of features, style, and usability.

Score: 7.0/10 (or 3.5 stars)

Now this is truly a unique MP3 player. While we don’t have any specifics on this player yet, (including price, features or name) what we do know is that Aigo is releasing a digital audio device that resembles a jigsaw puzzle piece. I love creative and innovative design, but this seems borderline ridiculous. I hope the functionality of this device will be more intuitive than it appears. Generally speaking, you don’t want to equate using your product with a frustrating IQ test.

link - Aigo’s Puzzling new DAP

mobiBLU is known for their quality products. They are also known for their slightly unconventional designs and ideas. However, they are consistently one of the best boutique MP3 player developers out there right now. That being said, this one is a little off the wall, even for them. Introducing, the A10 UFO:

“The A10 UFO has a speaker, a vibration system (whatever that is),
Bluetooth and no screen. Battery life is unimpressive at 15 hours with
headphones and 6 hours with speakers, but this is likely to be more a
children’s toy than a “real” mp3 player anyways. Beam me up, Scotty.”

mobiBLU’s latest player, the T50, features a 2.6 inch haptic touchscreen. The device itself and the interface both appear attractive. Hopefully, the price point will be low enough to give it a solid chance against the iPods and Cowons in today’s crowded marketplace.

“The outer design looks mighty familiar with a 2.6-inch screen size that should put it in direct competition with the RAmos T50. It plays RM/RMVB and MP3, WMA, FLAC, AAC, and APE. The mobiBLU T50 in fact looks exactly like the Teclast M26, while the M26 supports more video files, including FLV.”

Recently, LG announced their new flash based MP3 player named the UP3 Touch. This player supports MP3, WMA, Ogg formats. It also has an FM tuner, a slick LED display and touch-sensitive controls. The UP3 Touch is expected to be released in both 2GB and 4GB varieties.

This MP3 player, however, leaves much to be desired in both originality and style. The flash based digital audio niche seems to be so saturated at the moment that it will take nothing short of a grand-slam to make any headway into Apple and SanDisk territory. Of course, we haven’t gotten our hands on one yet but we are not expecting huge sales numbers for this model.

link - LG UP3 Touch

The Kana Micro is a brand new, and tiny, MP3 player from Green-House. The player has a very unique and geeky feel as the plastic casing is transparent with all the circuitry visible from the inside. Did we mention that it is tiny?

Similar to the average USB key, the Kan Micro DAP comes with a 2GB Micro SD card and supports MP3, WMA, and WMA DRM files. The only drawback we found is its limited battery lifespan of only 2hrs.. but considering the size the player this shouldn’t surprise anyone.

PMPToday is keeping us up to date with the latest rumors from Apple:

“Supposedly, the chips that will be used in the new iPhone Nano will be
ordered in March from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC)
and United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC), and we could see it
debut as early as June. Even though we’re so tempted to throw this bit
of info into the trash bin of hoaxes and rumors, we just can’t get
passed the idea that iPhone Nano cases are now on sale. Anyway, June isn’t that far away so I guess will probably know sooner than later if this is true or not.”

The newest device from Sandisk isn’t technically an MP3 player at all. At least not in the traditional sense. The new slotRadio is a portable music player that plays audio files stored on purchased memory cards. These cards are preloaded with literally thousands of today’s top songs and are available to be bought individually and played with the slotRadio.

“The immediacy of the plug-and-play model offered by the
card-plus-player format ushers in a new way for consumers to enjoy
music. To date, portable music devices typically required software
installations, followed by time-consuming music selection and
file-by-file downloading, topped off with cable connections and
synchronization….slotRadio dramatically lowers these barriers,
offering a genuine alternative to existing options”